Rooker’s clutch doubles, strong pitching win it for Oakland in extras

The A’s are somehow going toe-to-toe with the best teams in the league.

The Oakland Athletics don’t seem to have the capacity to score more than 3 runs in a game but it hasn’t mattered much with the way the team is pitching.

Today, the A’s only needed 4 pitchers in 10 innings to keep the now 16-9 Baltimore Orioles at bay. Starting with a vintage Ross Stripling outing — 5 ²⁄₃ innings with 2 earned runs, 3 Ks and 0 BBs — and closing with an increasingly vintage dominant inning from Mason Miller, the pitching staff is somehow proving itself to be a huge strength, maybe the team’s only one, this season.

Mixed in there was a quick 3-pitch out from T.J. McFarland to finish the 6th for Stripling and a genuinely impressive trio of hitless innings from Mitch Spence, whose offspeed mix made the O’s AL-leading offense look foolish. With Miller and Spence — add Kyle Muller to this group — the A’s all of a sudden have three reliever who could probably step into the rotation and immediately be pretty good. The improvement from last season, when we could barely find anyone who could throw a comfortable inning, is jarringly impressive to see and it lays the long-overdue foundation for a potentially competitive team.

All in all, the A’s staff was able to hold the Orioles to a manageable two runs, one of which came on a smooth-arching homerun from Baltimore centerfielder Cedric Mullins. Oakland ironically had scored 3 runs in all three of its last games, so all the team needed was to keep that streak going to win the game. And magically, they did just that.

The A’s got a quick one early when Shea Langeliers, surprisingly hitting in the 3-hole today, lifted his own solo shot over the left-center field wall.

After that, the offense looked typically dead for a full 7 innings. They don’t deserve too much blame since they were facing one of the best pitchers in the league in Corbin Burnes for most of that stretch, but it didn’t make it any easier to watch.

Then, the 9th inning arrived and with it, the O’s closer, Craig Kimbrel, whose 0.82 ERA was even tinier than Mason Miller’s 1.59, though Miller had the sabermetric edge with a supernatural 0.14 FIP — it’s down to 0.05 now by the way. As dominant as Kimbrel’s been though, he was equally a mess tonight. After allowing a leadoff double to Brent Rooker, the 35-year-old righty gave up a 5-pitch walk to JJ Bleday, and a game-tying double to Abraham Toro, all with no outs on the board. Bleday almost scored the go-ahead run on Toro’s hit but a successful challenge overturned the safe call at the plate and got Baltimore their first out of the inning.

Kimbrel’s strike-throwing ability then completely vanished from his body and left him with 9 balls in 10 pitches to Darell Hernaiz and Lawrence Butler to load the bases. Orioles manager Brandon Hyde saw enough and pulled the closer out of his first blown save since Opening Day. Righty Keegan Akin came up and swiftly struck out a couple of struggling lefties in Seth Brown and Ryan Noda.

With extra innings now upon the A’s after Spence shut the O’s down in his overtime inning, Tyler Nevin led things off with a ground out to move Noda over to third. Langeliers followed up with a soft grounder that got fielded by catcher Adley Rutschman, who noticed Noda foolishly running on contact and got him out in a pickle. Adding to the baserunning shenanigans, Langeliers missed his chance in the midst of the pickle to get himself to second base. No matter though, as Rooker came through with a second clutch double that went deep enough to get Langeliers home all the way from first to take the lead.

With Mason Miller waiting in the bullpen, everyone on the field knew the game was a wrap. Put a ghost runner at second. Hell, load the bases with all the ghost runners you want. Miller threw 10 strikes and 10 fastballs in 13 pitches and gave Baltimore nearly zero chance of getting back into the game.

As much of a potential juggernaut the Orioles are, the A’s went toe-to-toe with them, fresh off of splitting their four-game set against the New York Yankees. They’re still 5 games under .500 but it’d only take a little more offense to get this team to be a competent and, dare I say, competitive team. They’ll look to see if they can get over the 3-run hump tomorrow as the scorching hot J.P. Sears takes on an old friend in Cole Irvin.